1971 GMC C10 - Clean & Simple C10

Jon Entwistle purchased his C10 not as a fixer upper, but rather a necessary tool for work. He needed a truck to take loads of junk to the dump and, you know, do truck stuff with. Although the truck didn’t look great, the C10 drove OK, and for all intended purposes, worked for many years.

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Jon’s daughter drove it from time to time and one day smacked right into a buck deer with it. Yes, I said a deer! The deer did some major damage to the front of the truck and the accident put the truck out of commission. Jon had it towed back to the house and pushed it to the side of the field, where it sat for a couple of years, deer parts and all.

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Although Jon liked his truck, he always loved the shortbeds. Luckily for him he got a good deal on a shortbed and started the hunt for a frame. He started out by asking around, and instead of finding a frame, a friend told him that CLASSIC TRUCKS did an article explaining exactly how to convert the longbed frame into a shortbed frame. Jon asked a good friend of his, Lyle Brown, what he thought of the article and if he was interested in helping complete the frame modification.

Lyle had him bring the magazine article and the frame over and voilà, Lyle brings the frame back a couple of days later shortened. It looked great! Now the only thing left was to rebuild a suspension including all new ball joints, control arm bushings, and CPP drop spindles. Jon also put the rearend above the rear springs to help lower the rear, C-notched the frame to gain some clearance off the framerails, and the truck was now sitting pretty.

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He then got started on replacing the cab corners and rockers that were rusted. Jon also sandblasted the compete cab to see the imperfections in the body. Jon did all the bodywork and painted the truck a little brighter than the factory GMC green and used a cream color to achieve a two-tone look. While the paint was drying, Jon ordered all new trim, weather stripping, window felt, and additional parts from the LMC parts catalog. He got the seats out of a 2006 Chevy truck and reworked the seat rails to fit them in the truck. Jon dynomated the floors and installed an LMC carpet kit to finish off the interior.

We asked Jon what he planed on doing next to the truck and he said “I want to install an aftermarket A/C unit so I can cruise in comfort, but in my opinion, the truck is done. I drive the pickup four to five days a week to work and back, but never in the winter time.” At the time Jon had 12,000 miles on his clean C10 and I can only imagine he has put on a few thousand more since we saw him last.